“Goodbye, mamma.”
They embraced each other warmly, then a porter shut the door and the train began to move.
They were alone. The abbé, in high delight, congratulated himself on his clever management, and began to talk to the young people entrusted to his care. The day he left, it had been arranged that Madame de Martinsec should allow him to give the three boys lessons during the whole of the holidays, and he was anxious to test the abilities and dispositions of his new pupils.
The eldest, Roger de Sarcagnes, was one of those tall schoolboys who have shot up too rapidly, thin and pale, with joints that seemed to fit badly. He spoke slowly, with an air of simplicity.
Gontran de Vaulacelles, on the contrary, had remained short in stature, and squat; he was spiteful, sly, mischievous, and queer-tempered. He made fun of everyone, talked like a grown man, making equivocal answers that caused his parents some uneasiness.
The youngest, Roland de Bridoie, did not seem to have any aptitude for anything at all. He was a jolly little animal and resembled his father.
The abbé had warned them that they would be under his orders during the two summer months, and he read them a carefully worded lecture on their duty to him, on the way in which he intended to order their ways, and on the manner that he would adopt towards them.
He was an upright and simple-minded priest somewhat sententious and full of theories.
His conversation was interrupted by a loud sigh uttered by their fair neighbour. He turned his head towards her. She was sitting still in her corner, her eyes staring in front of her, her cheeks slightly pale. The abbé turned back to his disciples.
The train rushed on at full speed, running through plains and woods, passing under bridges and over bridges, and in its shuddering onrush shaking violently the long chain of travellers shut up in the carriages.
Meanwhile Gontran de Vaulacelles was questioning Father Lecuir about Royat and the amusements the place had to offer. Was there a river? Could you fish in it? Would he have a horse, as he had last year? And so on.
Abruptly, the young woman uttered something like a cry, an “Oh” of pain, quickly smothered. Uneasy, the priest asked her:
“You are feeling unwell, Madame?”
She answered:
“No, no, Father, it is nothing, a passing indisposition, nothing at all. I have been ailing for some time, and the motion of the train wearies me.”
Her face had indeed become livid.
He insisted:
“Is there anything I can do for you, Madame?”
“Oh, no, nothing at all, Father. Thank you so much.”
The priest returned to his conversation with his pupils, accustoming them to his methods of teaching and discipline.
The hours went by. Now and then the train stopped and went on once more. The young woman seemed to be sleeping now, and she never moved, ensconced in her corner. Although the day was more than half gone, she had not yet eaten anything. The abbé thought: “This young lady must be very ill indeed.”
The train was only two hours away from Clermont-Ferrand, when all at once the fair traveller began to moan. She looked as if she might fall from her seat, and, supporting herself on her hands, with wild eyes and distorted face, she repeated: “Oh, my God, oh, my God!”
The abbé rushed to her.
“Madame … Madame … Madame, what is the matter?”
She stammered:
“I … I … think that … that … that my baby is going to be born.” And thereupon she began to cry out in the most terrifying fashion. From her lips issued a long-drawn and frantic sound which seemed to tear its way through her throat, a shrill frightful sound, with an ominous note in it that told her agony of mind and bodily torture.
The unfortunate priest, dazed, stood in front of her, and did not know what to do or what to say or what effort to make; he murmured: “My God, if I had only known! … my God, if I had only known!” He had crimsoned to the very whites of his eyes; and his three pupils stared in utter bewilderment at this outstretched moaning woman.
Suddenly, she writhed, lifting her arms over her head, and a strange shuddering seized her limbs, a convulsion that shook her from head to foot.
The abbé thought that she was going to die, to die there before him, deprived of help and care by his incompetence. So he said in a resolute voice:
“I will help you, Madame. I don’t know what to do … but I will help you as best I can. I owe aid to all suffering creatures.”
Then, swinging round on the three youngsters, he cried:
“As for you, you are going to put your heads out of the windows, and if one of you turns round, he will copy out for me a thousand lines of Virgil.”
He lowered the three windows himself, pushed the three heads into their places, drew the blue curtains round their necks, and repeated:
“If you stir as much as once, you shall not be allowed a single outing during the whole of the holidays. And don’t forget that I never change my mind.”
And he turned back to the young woman, rolling up the sleeves of his cassock.
Her moans came ceaselessly, with now and then a scream. The abbé, his face crimson, helped her, exhorted her, spoke words of comfort to her, and lifted his eyes every minute towards the three youngsters, who kept turning swift glances, quickly averted, towards the mysterious task performed by their new tutor.
“Monsieur de Vaulacelles, you will copy out for me the verb ‘to disobey’ twenty times!” he cried.
“Monsieur de Bridoie, you shall have no sweets for a month!”
Suddenly the young woman ceased her monotonous wailing, and almost in the same instant a strange thin cry, like a yelp or a meow, brought the three schoolboys round in one wild rush, sure that they had just heard a newly born puppy.
In his hands the abbé was holding a little naked babe. He regarded it
